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Cost and Management Accounting




                    Notes          9.2 Nature and Scope of Management Accounting

                                   The scope of management accounting is broader which draws concept and applications from
                                   various disciplines. The two major dominant forces of management accounting are  fi nancial
                                   accounting and cost accounting.

                                   1.   Financial Accounting:  It is a traditional method of accounting that supplies historical
                                       information about the firm during the past. Whatever information extracted is being utilized

                                       for the constructive future policies and financial forecasting of the firm. For example, from




                                       the yesteryear financial statements, the firm could plan the volume of sales, volume of

                                       purchases, size of the debtors, creditors, stock of the firm, cash required by the fi rm on

                                       everyday to meet financial commitments and so on.
                                   2.   Cost Accounting:  It is another important process of accounting which affords the cost
                                       information of either product or service of the  firm and analyses and interprets them

                                       through various tools viz marginal costing, standard costing, process costing, unit costing,
                                       batch costing and so on, for the formulation of policies and assist the firm to carry out the

                                       operations of the undertaking.
                                   3.   Statistical Methods: It is another component of management accounting which plays a
                                       pivotal role in presentation of information through charts, diagrams etc. by the various
                                       departments.
                                   4.   Operations Research: It is an inevitable tool complementing the management accounting
                                       in deriving rational decisions through decision tree analysis and so on.




                                           Functions of Management Accounting

                                                Extraction of Data                  From the financial statements





                                             Classification, Modification,              Modification of Data
                                                Compilation of Data




                                             Analysis and Interpretation of Data       Decisions are made




                                                Management Accounting
                                                  Information system                   Communication of Results




                                             Facilitation of Control                Through the comparison of
                                                                                      actual and standard



                                        Credit policy, changes in fashion are taken as
                                                the base for decisions             Utilisation of qualitative information





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